jacaranda trees can carry four lanes of traffic while
permitting angle parking at the curbs. In 1948,
Salisbury had no buildings taller than five stories.
Presbyterian Church steeple at left points to the
2,200° Fahrenheit, spouted sparks and smoke
like irate mechanical volcanoes. And every
four hours a converter disgorged 50 tons of
molten copper in a dramatic, fiery cascade
that seared the eye.
Outside, in the darkness, 300-pound ingots
cooled on a loading platform, awaiting the
freight cars that would trundle them to world
markets. With the traditional export route
via Matadi near the mouth of the Congo
River cut off by the Republic, Katangese
copper was rolling by rail across Angola to
Lobito on the Atlantic, or to Mozambique's
port of Beira on the Indian Ocean.
The same ore-rich region that feeds the
flaring converters of Lubumbashi juts south
east into the Federation of Rhodesia and
Nyasaland where the Copperbelt-extending
from Bancroft to Ndola-annually produces
some $340,000,000 worth of the metal.
curving facade of the Charter House, home of the
British South Africa Company. Sphere-topped
tower houses an insurance firm. The camera's
wide-angle lens tilts the buildings.
Not so long ago, thousands of tons of tim
ber disappeared every year into furnaces to
power the Copperbelt's mines and smelters.
But since January, 1960, clean and smoke
less electricity has surged in from a narrow
gorge in the turbulent Zambezi River.
There, 420 feet high, nearly half a mile
along its crest, creator of an artificial lake
nearly twice as large as Rhode Island, stands
the mightiest work man has wrought in
Africa since the Pyramids of Egypt-the
Kariba Dam (next page).
"Virtually everything used in building the
dam came here over 50 miles of unpaved
roads and rickety bridges," Leslie H. New
man of the Federal Power Board told me. A
new township, complete with shops, banks,
school, and post office, had been built near
the site. During construction it housed 8,000
Africans and 2,000 Europeans.
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